Keen-eyed Trust members will already know that we increased our investment in the football club last week. Mindful of the impact of Saturday’s postponement, and of the fact that this is typically a time of year when the club’s cash-flow is stretched, we chose to invest a further £5,000 in New Raith Rovers Ltd.

We were delighted to see the Jim McMillan Club and the 200 Club make similar contributions to the football club, and hope that our combined efforts – and the non-financial contributions of other supporters groups and individual volunteers – help the club through to the new year when we we have a more favourable run of fixtures.

Our next Annual General Meeting takes place at 1.15pm on Saturday 17th December in the Adam Smith Centre, Kirkcaldy. This AGM will present the last 3 years Trust accounts for your review, and will be followed by a more informal session to discuss a number of fundraising initiatives.

If you cannot attend and require any vote to be cast on your behalf, please contact me to request a Proxy form.

The formal business of the AGM will commence at 1.15pm. As normally happens at our AGMs, two of our board members will be standing down on rotation. Both have indicated their willingness to be considered for re-election, alongside any member who wishes to stand for election. Fresh blood on the Trust board is always welcomed, and I would encourage anyone with an interest in becoming more involved in the Trust to come forward at this point, at the AGM or at any point in the future.

In 2008 we published our first summary of “who owns what” at Raith Rovers, and since then we have continued to update this to incorporate changes to the ownership structure and trends in the club’s performance on and off the park.

Thanks go to John Litster for granting us permission to use the historical financial data originally published in his excellent book “Always Next Year”. The figures for the years since its 2008 publication are taken from the accounts of Raith Rovers FC Ltd, Raith Rovers Holdings Ltd, New Raith Rovers Ltd and Starks Park Properties Ltd – and all figures have been adjusted for inflation to 2016 prices.

This document is best viewed in large format – for best results click the link below and then print it out on A3 paper.

At our fourth annual quiz night, reigning champions “Four Men One Cup” fought off stiff competition to retain their trophy. They now have two cups and will have to change their name. For the second year running they also declined their cash prize, and we would like to publicly thank them for their generosity and congratulate them for their wit and intelligence.

A capacity crowd formed 12 teams, with five of the RRFC board represented in two of the teams; and first team squad members Kevin McHattie, Joel Coustrain, Yaw Osei and Andreas Thorsen forming another RRFC team along with goalkeeping coach Wayne Henderson.

Scoring was unbelievably close right until the end, with 3 points separating the top 4 teams after 10 rounds. The RRFC players almost lifted top prize, until an arithmetical error was uncovered on their scoresheet! The highlight of the quiz was the now infamous “career paths” round, although it was slightly less cryptic than in previous years.

The booby prize (aka The Jim Leishman Memorial Trophy) went home with a team from the local SNP constituency office. For some reason they seemed delighted with the prize.

A straining raffle table was cleared at the end of the night, with the proceeds contributing to a very healthy profit of £525 for the evening.

The board of the Raith Supporters Trust would like to thank everyone who attended, and also those who contributed raffle prizes. Thanks also to the team behind the bar in the Raith Suite, and last but definitely not least Steve Wallace for compiling the quiz and compering the event.

The Raith Trust are holding their annual Quiz Night on Thursday 22nd September 2016 at 7pm in the Raith Suite, Starks Park.

Tickets are £10 a head for teams of 4, which includes pies, a drink from the bar and entry to the quiz itself.

Some of the finest minds in the Rovers support will be in attendance (!), along with teams from the Starks Park office, players and coaching staff.

Any Trust member that wants to join a team (or wants to bring a pal – membership of the Trust isn’t mandatory) is more than welcome, so please contact membership@raithtrust.org.ukif you’re like to book a place on the Trust team, or to enter a team of your own.

The Trust Quiz has been running for 4 years, and is always an entertaining night with a raffle and auction during the evening to compliment the quiz.

Following the stirring derby victory over Dunfermline Athletic recently, Trust board members Steve Wallace and Alan Russell met with Gary Locke to welcome him to the club, congratulate him on the afternoon’s victory, and present him with a framed print of James Muddiman’s iconic painting of Starks Park.

Gary assured us that the print would be taking pride of place on the wall of his office in Starks Park, and we wish him a long and successful reign in Kirkcaldy.

Last week, the Livi For Life trust and the Raith Supporters Trust sent a joint letter to Neil Doncaster, chief executive of the SPFL, regarding the rescheduling of the final set of fixtures in this season’s Championship campaign. Following this, we were pleased to speak to Mr Doncaster to discuss the issues raised in our letter.

The key concerns we raised included:

Whether the impact of moving 5 fixtures in order to accommodate 1 fixture in the TV schedule was acceptable or appropriate

What consideration was given to the financial impact on clubs of fixture changes, and what consultation takes place with clubs

What consideration was given to the impact on the supporters’ matchday experience, and what consultation takes place with supporters

What mechanisms are in place for clubs to challenge the rescheduling of their fixtures

Many of the issues we discussed are confidential in nature, relating to the commercial arrangements with various broadcasters. We can report, however, that Mr Doncaster acknowledged the difficulties that the rescheduling of fixtures raised for supporters, particularly those at key points in the football season; and that our concerns were listened to and understood by Mr Doncaster, and in many cases shared. Where we weren’t in total agreement, we were pleased that the constructive tone of the conversation allowed these concerns to be noted for consideration in future.

We will strive to ensure structured dialogue on issues such as these takes place, and would welcome any opportunities for supporter representation in discussions with broadcasters going forward.

We would like to express our gratitude to Andrew Jenkin of Supporters Direct Scotland for helping to arrange this conversation. SDS and the network of Trusts that it supports provide a forum for dialogue and engagement between supporters across Scotland, and with the football authorities, and we appreciate the opportunities that this creates.

Last week, the club announced season ticket prices for next season’s campaign. Whilst we at the Raith Supporters Trust appreciate that developing a pricing policy is a complex task, one for which there is not a single ‘right answer’, we would like to share our thoughts on the newly-announced prices, and the issues that they raise. We requested advance notice of the new pricing structure ahead of its public announcement, but this request was regrettably declined – we are therefore making public the feedback which we had hoped to be able to offer constructively for consideration by the football club’s board before reaching any decisions about pricing.

Firstly, we welcome the ‘early bird discounts’ that have been announced, particularly in light of our possible promotion to the Premiership. In the last few seasons these offers have seen the club benefit from significant numbers of season ticket sales prior to the close season, allowing them to set budgets for the coming season, and to support the manager in his efforts to prepare for the coming season. We anticipate that this offer will be similarly successful this summer.

We acknowledge the need to increase revenue to the football club, given the lower than anticipated attendances over recent seasons. This is not a unique situation for Raith Rovers – many clubs across Scotland are faced with the same issue, which is not helped by changes to scheduling to accommodate TV coverage. It has been disappointing to observe that the improvement on the park has not seen significant increases to our attendances. However, we are sceptical as to whether increasing prices will do anything other than further erode our attendances, but accept that it is possible that the increased revenue per supporter will outweigh the impact of declining attendances in the short-term. It is our firmly held view that one of the club’s greatest priorities for the medium- and long-term should be to grow the fanbase, and believe that increasing the price of every category of ticket will make that objective harder to achieve.

Turning to the issue of the different price changes for each category of season ticket, we are particularly disappointed that the smallest increases are for adults’ and senior citizens’ tickets, and that the largest increase is for children’s tickets. A 67% increase in the price of any product or service would be an unusual event, but the fact that the price of one category of ticket has increased by so much more than other categories concerns us. We question the wisdom of this particular decision, how it fits within the club’s strategy, and what consultation took place in order to arrive at it.

Our understanding is that there were around 250 junior season tickets sold this season, and even if every one of them was renewed for 2016/17 the additional revenue to the club would only be £5000. It is our opinion that this revenue would be better found elsewhere.

We note that five Premiership teams currently offer free season tickets for children, and only two clubs have priced their tickets at more than this new £50 price. Of the current Championship teams, there are fewer clubs offering free or low-priced junior season tickets. It is not only on the field of play that we aspire to emulate clubs in the top tier!

Increasing the number of children attending regularly was earmarked as a priority several seasons ago, and a lot of time and effort has been expended by a hard-working group of volunteers in order to achieve this. The Roary Club has been running over the past two seasons, with over 460 members, and has been hugely successful. Kids are rewarded for regular attendance at matches, receiving a range of rewards throughout the season, and it is clear from their reactions how much these mean to them. Anecdotally we hear from their parents that ‘the nag factor’ has a knock-on effect on them – on some Saturdays they attend games that they would otherwise have missed, just because their child is determined to get as many Roary stamps on their card as possible! In a survey conducted at the end of last season, 95% of respondents felt that the Roary Club had improved the match day experience for their children, and 75% said it had improved their own match day experience. It also showed 38% identifying cost as a barrier to attending games. This figure rose to 55% amongst non-season ticket holders, and was the biggest factor the club have complete control over – weather and quality of football were stated as the only bigger barriers.

From earlier research that we commissioned through our supporter survey in 2009, and again in 2013 to inform the priorities of a volunteer group tasked with increasing attendances and improving the matchday experience, we mapped the life-cycle of a typical Raith Rovers supporter. This research found that supporters typically begin following Raith Rovers as a child, consolidate their allegiance as teenagers, before establishing themselves as lifetime fans in adulthood. Significant ‘drop-off points’, where fans are most likely to stop attending regularly, were found to be in teenage years (as they find other things to do with their time and money), and in adulthood when starting a family (due to financial pressures and football not being considered a suitable thing to do with young children). Our greatest opportunities to grow the fanbase is therefore to get as many young children as possible to begin their football-supporting life at Starks Park, to make it affordable and desirable for them to continue attending as teenagers and young adults, and to encourage parents of young children to think of an afternoon at the football as a family-friendly environment and price that family activity competitively in comparison with other leisure activities.

In conclusion, we observe that the largest increases in season ticket prices will directly impact supporters (and potential supporters) at these three critical points in the supporter life-cycle, and we would like to offer our support to the football club in finding innovative ways to overcome the detrimental impact of these changes.

Shopping Cart

About The Trust

Raith Supporters Trust was set up in 2001 to make sure that the voice of the Raith Rovers support is heard.

We are a democratic organisation made up of ordinary fans of Raith Rovers FC. We work with the football club board and other fan groups to help make sure that Raith Rovers FC has a strong and stable future as a club at the heart of the community.

The Trust is the legal vehicle for the Raith Forum’s shareholding, which represents approximately 14% of the total shares in the companies which make up Raith Rovers. As a result the fans are now represented on the board of the football club with a 'Supporters Director' giving Raith fans a real say in the direction and running of the club.